How To Make Star Wars Episode VII Good: The Experts Speak Out

You know what they say about opinions, and everyone having a stinky one? That phrase increases by 500 when you apply opinions to J.J. Abrams’ developing Star Wars: Episode VII. The movie’s so hotly debated, fans lose their minds when NO news is handed out to them. Can you imagine how they’ll react when actual facts start dropping. (If, in fact, they ever do actually drop.)

But the video above is worth your time, believe it or not. The guys at ScreenJunkies assembled a team of Star Wars nerds – including Upright Citizens Brigade member Justin Donaldson and reputed Star Wars critic Michael Barryte – to discuss what absolutely NEEDS to happen for Abrams to hit a home run with the first Star Wars movie in years.

What do they suggest? Stay away from members of the Original Trilogy! Or, make them the ONLY members of the cast. Fair enough. What else? Find a balance between light adventure and dark mythology. Return to the gravity of the first trilogy. Establish a look (which Abrams wants to do with practical effects and actual film). The conversation ends with an amusing contest that predicts the titles for Abrams’ film. I bet these guys aren’t that far off.

There’s one thing that can curb all of this speculation. Lucasfilm and Disney can start dropping facts on the Star Wars fanbase. Concrete facts. Casting news. Story details. A release date. You know, all of those things that OTHER movies scheduled to come out in 2015 already have revealed. But we don’t know much about Episode VII just yet. We think it might come out around Christmas. And it could star the supremely bland Alex Pettyfer … which, to me, would be like making the Hayden Christensen mistake all over again.

But without concrete facts, we’re largely just spinning our wheels, talking about how much we disliked the prequels. Patton Oswalt, of course, did that best in the NSFW clip:

And Barryte conducted a Master Class in Prequels improvements in his heralded Webisodes. Check them out below. There’s SO much pre-Star Wars chatter, and yet, most of it is about nothing. Not yet, anyway. We need details. Yet all we have is speculation. For now. Let’s hope that changes soon.